and reducing the people noise makes the process of working together easier and, dare I say, more enjoyable.
The eighth consecutive study on engagement conducted by research company Gallup tells us that the cost of disengaged employees is deemed critical to a company's performance. The statistics are highly compelling. Some examples of a highly engaged workforce where people enjoy coming to work and working with each other suggest that there is:
• 65 per cent less turnover
• 37 per cent less absenteeism
• 48 per cent fewer safety incidents.
It is clear that minimising the people issues and creating a highly engaged workforce makes a difference. We're not talking about satisfaction for its own sake. We are talking about the cost implications of not investing in your people. More about this in chapter 2.
There are three options for dealing with the people noise.
1. Deal with people noise as it arises. Nip it in the bud so the spot fires don't become bushfires that end up being overwhelming or near impossible to address.
2. Deal with it poorly. Create even more issues by tackling the problems improperly or incompletely, damaging trust and respect in the process through inappropriate or aggressive communication.
3. Ignore them and hope they will go away. I call managers who do this ‘broken glass’ managers: they step over the broken glass in the middle of the room in the hope that someone else will clean up the mess. Don't be a broken-glass manager. Get out the brush and shovel and deal with it.
Most managers pick option three and end up sweeping the glass shards under the carpet. The next group takes option two and ‘attacks’ the issue or person and deals with it poorly, only to see that the approach is ineffectual and often makes things worse. That is the behaviour of a dick.
Remarkable managers boldly tackle option one. They handle the complexities as they arise, with candour and kindness, and end up getting things done. People want to work for them.
Time poverty – a growing phenomenon
Time poverty is not having enough time to do all the things you want or need to do. Like a shortage of income, lack of time is a disadvantage for individuals and organisations.
Societally, we have never been busier. There is more to do, higher expectations that we will deliver it perfectly, and greater distraction from devices and social media than we've ever encountered in the past. There is increased competition in all aspects of products and services, ongoing family commitments, financial pressures in a challenged economy, and many people are facing technology overload. No wonder we feel time-poor.
The past ten years have given us a plethora of functional, fun and powerful electronic tools at our disposal. Many of them started out claiming to make our personal and working lives easier. There are electronic scheduling systems, handheld devices, and we have the ability to communicate with anyone, anywhere, at any time. Yet we still struggle to stay organised and focused. It's most likely due to the fact that we have more information to wade through than ever before. It all adds up to more excuses to not address problems when they happen, because we are ‘busy’ wading through our technology.
Productivity expert, thought leader and author of Smart Work Dermot Crowley says, ‘We need more than just new technology to stay organised in the modern workplace. We need new mindsets, new systems and new skills’.
Crowley tells us that a large part of the problem is that we are using twenty-first century technologies, but still using twentieth-century methodologies. He says the main reasons we are so time-poor in this modern era are:
• We have too many meetings, especially at the senior manager level. It is not unusual for the modern
• manager to spend 80 per cent of their core hours in meetings. This leaves little time to read and respond to emails, solve issues, develop strategies and do the thinking to deliver the right outcomes. Weekends and late nights are often taken up getting to the other needs. We are not creating enough time to stop, think and plan.
• We are drowning in emails. Six years ago the average senior executive would have 60 emails per day to deal with. Now we are looking at an average of more than 300 per day. This email noise has created an unprecedented communications focus. These emails are a combination of cc's (copying people in), information only, marketing products and services, blogs, personal memos and event requests, just to name a few. No wonder important emails are sometimes hard to find.
• Our use of technology is disabling our productivity. While technology has made doing business and connecting with others easier it has also created a sense of urgency that is crippling the way we work. We can communicate with anyone at any time. This is generally seen as hugely advantageous, but it has also created a sense that everything is urgent and important. It is not the case: we just lack the tools and training to see what is urgent and what is important.
• We procrastinate. We need to relearn the art of planning what to do and committing to action. We put things off in the hope that they will go away or sort themselves out. It's no surprise they don't and then become much bigger than initially planned, and much more time-intensive – especially things like giving feedback and tackling tough conversations.
We need to learn to confront issues as soon as we see them. How many conversations with people – friends, colleagues and family – become more serious than they need to be because you don't ‘nip them in the bud’ in the early days? That is, when you first notice the issue or problem, or when something feels not quite right.
The things we let go vary widely: being spoken to rudely, observing someone arrive late, missing a deadline, or your manager cancelling your weekly catch-up again. It can be anything that seems small, at the time. You might decide it's not worth worrying about so you let it go because you ‘don't sweat the small stuff’, or because it has only happened once or twice and you are too nervous to approach the person. Perhaps you deny it will become something bigger, or perhaps you would just prefer to avoid conflict. There are plenty of reasons why we don't have the tough conversations but the point is, there is a downside to sticking your head in the proverbial sand.
Ignoring these issues can be the difference between dealing with a spot fire and fighting a raging bushfire. The longer we leave it the greater the costs to the business and ourselves.
When we see a spot fire we grab some water and put it out, right? We know that fire is dangerous and it could turn ugly pretty quickly. It's the same when we don't nip problems in the bud.
In 2014 McKinsey put out a white paper called ‘Bad to Great: The path to scaling up excellence’, which states that the most important factor in leadership excellence is the ability to ‘nip it in the bud’. Leaders who are focused on improving behaviour improve organisational performance. Eliminating the negative is the first step in the process. Destructive behaviour – be it selfishness, nastiness, fear, laziness or dishonesty – packs a far bigger punch than constructive behaviour. Furthermore, it damages the bottom line.
Matrix structures add complexity
As organisations grow so do their complexities. In most organisations this leads to matrix structures, with people working on multiple projects across business lines, often with more than two managers.
About thirty years ago this structure became popular and organisations such as IBM, HP, Citibank, Nestle and Xerox led the way. Today it's not just for big businesses; many small
